


scatter like birds

by tamsinb



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Character Study, Claustrophobia, Dissociation, Gen, Gore, Hallucinations, No Sexual Content, POV Second Person, Songfic, Trauma, mental manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:02:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27777316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamsinb/pseuds/tamsinb
Summary: Nagomi Mcdaniel has returned to Hawai'i. Something has come there with her. She feels something still in her head. She asks Sutton Dreamy to help her get it out.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	scatter like birds

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is very different from my usual stuff, so if you're coming here from that or just stumbled across this, please please please check the tags for content warnings! It has some pretty intense themes and I don't want anyone to do harm to themselves by reading it. And if I've missed any tags then I'm very sorry and I'll add any that are requested. (Comment moderation is on so if you comment with what's missing I'll see it before it's posted.)
> 
> With all of that said, I hope you enjoy!

* * *

_ “i want my love to redeem me _

_ let these killers finally see me _

_ i feel it growing in me _

_ at the brink of death…” _

_ "broken birds (rest in pieces)", car seat headrest _

* * *

You hadn’t remembered the heat being so overbearing. It wills you to stasis - or maybe you were willing yourself that way, either way you sit rockstill on a folding deck chair on some nameless Hawaiian beach. With every second you don’t move you feel the stasis and the heat working in tandem to decouple, denature your proteins, return you to some primordial unbirthed sludge - and yet, you force yourself to remain motionless.

“Hey, Nagomi!” Montgomery’s voice from the beach. Some of the Fridays (which includes you once again) are holding a laid-back all-chill no-pressure pickup game on the beach. Montgomery waves, along with some of the members of your former team. You don’t remember any of them. But you know that you should. At least some of them, but not a single one sparks recognition. You take the dull dread the realization looses in you and compress it into a small sharp crystal to be stashed in some empty corner of your head.

“Nagomi,” and Montgomery is right next to you now, “come on and play with us for a bit, huh?”

“I don’t,” you say, and your voice comes out normal, blessedly so. (Why had you been worried it wouldn’t?) “I don’t know. Not sure I’m up for it.”

“Aw don’t be like that! Don’t just laze around, everyone wants to see you swing!”

It’s true, you realize. Expectant faces. The kind you’ve never been able to let down. Your hamartia, that pathological need to not just meet or exceed but devour expectations.

The deck chair groans and you realize you’re already wielding your arm’s red armored coating. A classic Baltimore souvenir. (But you used to remove it, didn’t you? When you used to relax, didn’t you? And yet you can’t imagine why you would ever want to.) The sand burns scorches immolates your feet as you shake away the bucket hat someone had thrown on your head as a joke you’d been too lazy to negate. The sunglasses stay on. It’s too fucking hot.

The pitcher grins an easy eyesclosed smile. You dig your feet into the ground. A bat you don’t remember grabbing is in your hand. The pitcher becomes an indistinct figure in your eyes, a person no longer and now only a mass of sinew whose role is to dispense you balls to impact. And, since you’re here, why not hit one real far, real fucking far god you’re getting worked up just imagining the pathetic faces of anyone misguided enough to think they can stand between you and a ball massacred, scoured, sent five six hundred yards in any direction it doesn’t matter-   
  
and oh look the sky’s black and red now fantastic you can finally fucking see again everything’s been so bright so bright since you got out nice to be back somewhere that the sky feels a comforting two inches above your head and you can tell the direction speed curve of the pitch before it’s even released before the pitcher even knows and the grim certainty settles over you of knowing exactly how far you’ll hit the ball and you hear it telling you good job well done good job and thank you you think thank you and you’re crying as you do crying tears of your own spinal fluid

anyway now to just get ready for the ball to get here sorry eyes! won’t be needing you and liters of liquid flesh bursts from your eyes and hardens into shell shell shell shell shell and you feel your calves explode into myriad appendages thin and articulated suspending what used to be your feet in air and you think hey if you’re gonna treat me like a god go ahead and grovel before me about all you’re good for anyway

and as you swing the rest of your body goes with it falling away in sloughs of flesh and your bones fragment and reshape and and and god doesn’t it feel so fucking good to be devoured to let something else run rampant over your body and leave you with something completely replaced by the most comforting artificiality after all you’ve spent this long dwelling in something unfamiliar not your own let’s go all the fucking way this time let’s see how little of nagomi is left by the time you’re done with me i can take it oh really it responds then why don’t i just

You stumble. The sky is blue. You’re holding the bat and the ball has just left the air, a meteor strike in the sand what must be a thousand miles away from you. The tide laps over the ball.

“Nice one!” yells one of the fielders.

“Didn’t I tell you she still had it?” says Montgomery, beaming.

Some of them are even clapping. The pitcher scratches his nose sheepishly. “Can’t get anything by you, huh.”

Your stomach compresses to half its size and there’s a ringing not in your ears but in your forehead. You sprint away from the beach, away from the confused voices behind you. You find a shack to lean against, its shade a small respite from the sun’s insistent reminder of the nauseating fact that you’re  _ yourself _ . You dry heave. You can’t stop. Nothing comes up, and then everything.

*******

By the time you arrive back to your old room, Sutton Dreamy is there waiting for you.

“Oh good,” you smirk, “I was worried I would have to actually ask you for help.”

“You did,” she responds. “Just not out loud.”

“Is it too much to hope that I won’t have to explain my request.”

“I’m not psychic, Mcdaniel.”

“You literally are.”

“Oh,” says Dreamy, looking ever so slightly taken aback. “That’s right. I am.”

You sigh. “Why don’t I just explain.”

You're fond of Dreamy for two reasons. The first being that she had never seemed to care much about your skill, accomplishment, or pursuit of home run records, and had treated you basically the same way she did everyone else. Which is to say, strangely. And the second reason was that she didn't really seem to care about… anything at all. A tightly packaged bundle of pure vibes. Which is why, you think, probably why she's taken so well to life on the Fridays. Far better than you ever had, even with her shorter tenure. And it meant that, even with your usually curt method of interacting with others, she never seemed to take offense or really even much notice. You would call her a valuable ally if you could keep your brain from substituting the word “asset”.

"In the ancient times scholars called them Ley Lines and attributed their appearance to geographical happenstance," she had attempted to explain to you after a few weeks of her being on island time. "But today we know actually that vibes result from a complicated interplay of resonance and intra- slash- interresonance from the interactions of moving life."

"... Dreamy," you'd said, "I can literally never tell when you're fucking with me."

“Hm?” her eyes wide. “I would never fuck with you, Nagomi.”

“Is that so.”

“Well, probably not.”

You sigh. For better or for worse it had always seemed the two of you shared a wavelength - even if it was one way far out on the band, so to speak.

Back in the present: "I need you to look around inside my head." You pause and she looks at you with eyes as wide as ever. “You remember my. Situation.”

“Are you referring to your long-standing status as ‘shelled’?”

“Yes. Yes I am, Dreamy.”

“As I recall you were. In longer than anyone.”

“Don’t gotta remind me.”

“But everyone else seems okay.”

“Yeah. Yeah they do.” You’d been worried of it when York had fallen from wherever such things as deicide take place. And you rushed to him. To find him shaken, older, but unflappable as ever. A light. A dork. He seemed hazy on the details and you were loathe to prompt him.

What would York think of you if he saw, if he knew, could see what now passed for your mind? You would ruin it all, ruin whatever semblance of a happy reunion you'd cobbled together out of so much detritus. He seemed so happy to be back, to be seeing you, to be with you- (or was he just hiding it, all flecks of glass and crushed concrete inside and just hiding it, even better than you? Your heart surges. A delicious anguish overtakes you. You crystalize it and save it to torture yourself with later.)

“And you’re not?” She prompts you from your reverie.

“No. I’m not.” You wait and she remains silent. Don’t make me say it, you think, bitterly. Some psychic you are. “Look, I don’t really remember what went on in there for so long. I mean, I’m starting to forget lots of stuff these days. Which is terrifying. But. Worse is when I’ll see things. And I’m not sure where they’re coming from but every time it’s back at the field during day X and. I change and my body gets all fucked up. And I’m playing on the team that everyone else who was shelled was on. But I’m worse. I’m so much worse.”

“Right. So you are saying you believe a bit of the peanut’s influence has stayed lodged in your brain, and this is causing your current distress. A sensible theory.”

She says it so nonchalantly that you flinch. You wonder when everyone else came together behind your back and agreed to look over the fact that their antagonist deity was a peanut. Perhaps there were more important things for you to be concerned about but somehow the fact that it was a  _ peanut _ was one of the hardest things to process.

A fucking legume sending your splort and life into disarray as if the mere arbitrary fact of its nature was another taunting indignity on top of all others. Its ridiculous rotating shape filled you with contempt, once, and that contempt became burning hate and that hate became a spider that wrapped the inside of your head in sickly web, spinning everything else into its grasp and forming a solid round cucoon that redefined and overran its space. (You knew the name of this type of spider, once. You've forgotten it as you have many other things. You wonder where they've gone, and know you will never reclaim them.)

“I seem to recall Jessica Telephone behaving oddly during the brief time the birds had freed her. Perhaps this is something similar."

"Right! Yeah. You think so?" you say, grasping too eagerly for an explanation.

"Have you told anyone of this."

You shake your head.

“What of your partner.” You grimace. York’s mom. Well, perhaps that doesn’t disambiguate quite far enough these days. York’s other mom. How were you supposed to tell her? She’d been so preciously happy when you’d returned. She’d waited so patiently for the roles to be returned to how they were: you vivacious in every moment and her omnipresent at a distance, guarded. And now things were as they were and you had returned. How were you supposed to take that away from her. You shake your head.

“Hm,” she says, thought with a trace of judgment. “I am not sure I would be able to do it. You, as ever, are much of an enigma to me. I fear I would be unable to find my bearings.”

“Please. You’re one of the only people I’ve ever felt even slightly understands me.”

“I see.” She’s silent for a moment. “Nagomi Mcdaniel, you are making it very hard to refuse you.” Delivered with a slight lilt, though her face stayed as nearblank as always.

“Then don’t.”

“How could I?” Her hair curls slightly around her head.

*******

A change of scenery: Dreamy insists her dwelling has the more comfortable bed and atmosphere, which you couldn’t dispute even if you did have the energy. Dreamy has you sat in an armchair in the corner of her studio apartment. The place has an odd flow, cluttered with junk and detritus that still seems to channel everything harmoniously. You take a breath and it almost feels like it doesn’t catch in your throat.

Your eye catches on a small piece of netting tacked to the wall. “I remember that,” you say, “it’s from when we threw Tillman in the lake before we knew he didn’t know how to swim. And we had to fish him out before he drowned.”

“Yes,” said Dreamy, “A cherished memory.” Pause. “I do feel I should point out that you said the same thing two minutes prior.”

“Oh,” you say, for lack of anything else. “I guess I did.” Guess is all you can do. Maintaining composure in such situations is something you’ve had practice at. Sometimes you remember saying things you know you could never had said, to people you barely talked to these days. Sometimes you remember thinking things you know you could never have thought. But more often bits and pieces flew out of your grasp without even an indication of why it may have been this moment that left you and not some other.

“So,” began Dreamy, “by way of explanation. I will enter into your head. I will see what exists there. I will return. Then, if it can be fixed, I will set about doing so.”

“And if it can’t.”

“Then, I suppose, you will have at least one but more probably several decisions to make.”

“Right.”

“Does this adequately explain things.”

“No,” you deadpan. “But that’s not the important part.”

“Well then,” she says, smoothing out her bedsheets before seating herself atop. “You will see me lose consciousness. I will be gone before I return. Then I will awake.”

“O-” and Dreamy passes out “-kay.”

You sigh. She’s passed out sitting straight up, posture immaculate even with soul divorced from body. You hear York’s voice in your head call her a “friggin icon” and you’re tempted to agree. You sit in place as you were told. You look around for a clock and can’t find one. Your foot taps twice, then the other foot taps once. Even if there was a clock it wouldn’t do you any good, not like Dreamy gave you any sort of time frame to expect.

Your eyes move down to the chitinous exoskeleton you wear around your right arm. You’re supposed to be relaxing, right? Plus it’s getting a little itchy. Might as well remove it. You put your hand along the crease where it stops and the flesh of your upper arm begins. You wonder to yourself if it has a latch on it somewhere. You run your fingers all around it and find no seam.

Something strikes you as odd. It should have a latch, separation, something of that nature. You search your thoughts but cannot put a finger on it. Strange, you think. Until you remember with relief that the arm has never come off, always been welded to you, a replacement and not an addition. You settle down into the chair and a grin plasters itself onto your face. How relaxing, now that you’ve remembered, the pleasant searing burning pain rocketing up your arm.

You think back fondly to receiving the arm, a boon, a mark of authority granted to you to stand above others  _ hang on _ a mark of the approval that great Mother bestowed upon you  _ no it comes off it has to come off im not _ when you had begged pleaded cajoled wailed wept for more power more strength you were not yet enough on your own not enough to do what you needed to do not enough to singlehandedly leave the whole league a fucking burning crater a place where nothing lives  _ im not this isnt im not _ and oh the joy in every bone

in your body when you heard the reply of that Mother who spoke in a red voice of capitals of the great gift she would give you which was of course to make you a little less you and a little more not you and you laughed and laughed as you felt your arm collapse in on itself becoming infinitely denser growing supernovametalheavy with pure pure pure pure potential and you screamed in joy and you wailed in joy in joy in joy and clawed at the spot in joy and tendon stretched like piano wire in joy in joy and

you screamed in joy when you saw what you would receive bolted onto you your pitiful human instantiation so slowly overwritten by something truly worthwhile and oh the wonderful sensation of a million somethings crawling out of your new perfect arm and swarming across the inside of your body pumping you full your skin is crawling your skin is crawling there's something inside your lip as you laugh and it swells and you laugh and it might burst as you laugh and your body is awash in the sensation of the something in you squirming inextricably and now you knew you would never be bested and now no one could hope to match you and now only worthwhile to listen for the next capslock bark to come from outside your shell yours to do and theirs to die and oh while you wait-

all the rest of you? why not throw it to the fucking side you think what a great gift for it that plucks me out symmetry is pleasing to higher beings you reason so why not get rid of the other arm thats a good idea you think you should get rid of the other arm hey thats hey you think thats hey the other hey get thats other arm get good idea rid get other get arm get rid good idea arm get rid of the other arm

“Nagomi! Nagomi stop!”

“H-” and it catches in your throat. Why is it so dry? “Huh?”

Dreamy is clutching at you for some reason. Why would she be doing that. You’re holding onto something. You loosen your grip. The something is your other arm. You drop both hands to your side. A thin trail of blood falls from under ripped sleeve.

“Wh-” you start, and you wonder why your voice is shaky. “What happened?”

Dreamy looks in your eyes for a moment. She’s close and you have to refocus to make her more than a blurred mass. She seems satisfied.

“You seem to be back.”

“Did I-” A reflex hits you. You look down at your right arm. You unlatch it and it falls to the floor with a dull thud. You flex both hands. “Did I go somewhere?”

Dreamy lets out a long breath. “Something is wrong.”

*******

“I am once again sorry.” Dreamy stands tense over you, trying her best you think not to appear as if she is observing you and failing at it. “I don’t- I didn’t- I have not caused such a reaction before. And I am sorry to say- That is- I didn’t go very deep- Can we-” Her words are coming out fractured instead of mellifluously strung together and at least you’re able to take a little pride in having a mental state apparently so intense as to bring this out of her.

The pride is only surface deep of course. You find yourself distracted between two deeply physical sensations: one of your body’s wanting to shake beyond your control, and the other of raw distilled nausea. You focus on calming your body’s agitation and you feel bile rise in your throat. You swallow it down and feel your leg start to bounce. A shiver runs up your back. You fight it down and your head is assaulted by vertigo. Loosing your guts, you decide, is the less appealing option you think, and you focus on that and feel the tension somewhere in your prefrontal cortex dissipate as your body is wracked with spasms.

And Dreamy watches on and bites her lip and you wonder if you’ve seen a more obvious display of worry on her face at any other point. You wonder if she knows how much expressivity she has gained over the seasons. And you wonder if she would consider that a positive change.

“I cannot go any further in.”

“You have to.”

“I do not know what it might do to you.”

“You have to.”

“Nagomi, listen to me.”

“I am. You have to.”

“There is no course of predicting what venturing more in might elicit in you.”

“I’m strong. I can handle it.”

“Your strength is not an asset here.”

“I would rather lose what little I have left than continue as I am.”

Dreamy exhales and her hair wisps outward as she does. “Truly?”

“I do not mince words.” You believe this to be true.

“Consider what you are asking of me. You are asking me to accept both the risk and probable guilt of the outcome of my actions. You are deeply unkind, Nagomi Mcdaniel.”

You laugh and for a moment, just for a moment you halt the tremors in your hands to prop yourself up on your thighs. You force a smile that tastes cancerous.

“Then let me take your guilt. As recompense. Let it die with me.”

“You will carry me on your back as you have so many others.”

“What I’m good at.”

A pause long enough to forget everything and remind yourself back of it, twice over. Then:

“Okay.”

*******

“I will take it easy on you at first. That way-”

“Don’t bother.”

“Okay. Then I will not take it easy on you. I will make myself beyond caring for you. Is this more pleasing.”

“Yes.”

“Then.” Dreamy avoids your eyes as she makes it to the bed she’d been in before. You’d utilized every type of breathing you knew how to do and somehow brought your body back to a manageable state. You hoped it gave her some measure of comfort. You hoped at least her anger might die with you as well. “It may be similar or it may be different,” she continues, “and I have no way of telling which. But I will assume you do not care and so I will proceed.”

“Be careful.”

“No.” And with that she’s gone, same as before. And you are alone with her body.

You do not feel anxiety and you do not feel it now. If your breath rate quickens that is not anxiety you are simply oxygenating your blood to be ready should need arise to move. If your heartrate quickens it is simply to carry more of that oxygen to your muscles. You do not feel anxiety. You do not feel it now. If your muscles tighten it is only to make sure that they can snap tension on your bones at a moment’s notice. And if your bones ache, if you ache deep in your bones, then there must be some significance to this also, some purpose that your fleeting flightbourne thoughts cannot articulate at the moment. Some purpose to everything. Because you do not feel anxiety. You never feel anxiety. You feel necessity and motion. You do not feel anxiety and you do not feel it now.

The itch starts at the same time you realize you must escape. The room presses against you and right at the back of your neck an itch starts like the tags on your shirts you could never stand and you always ripped them out and that wasn’t enough so you took scissors to them and when that wasn’t enough you spent your eyestrength leaning in and meticulously removing every minute piece remaining and clipping every stray fiber. The room presses against you. You reach for the door. The door is right in front of you. You do not reach for the door because your arms are pinned to your side. The itch heightens. You tear at the back of your shirt. It does not help. You tear your shirt to shreds. It does not help. You do not tear your shirt to shreds because you cannot move your arms.

You cannot move your arms and the room is dark. The room is dark and hot now but you do not sauna it is not intolerable it is simply a feeling that reminds you that the room is hot. The room is warm and you sweat but not much only enough that your skin feels slimy and terrible against itself and you cannot move your arms. You cannot move your arms and you itch all across your back does it itch or is that pinpricks what is the difference is it an itch or is the room constricting all the blood out of you does it want to choke you to drain you to pop your cursedly damnably fluid body like a sac of pus and you scratch at yourself but you don’t because you cannot move your arms and you pound against the walls because you cannot move your arms and you hair falls in your face and you hate it when your hair is in your face you hate it and a bead of sweat drops from your hair and rolls excruciatingly slowly down your face and you hate it and you hate it and you wipe it away from your face and scratch and claw at your body but you don’t wipe it away and you don’t scratch at every part of you that itches and you cannot move your arms and you wonder why you cannot move your arms and you cannot move your arms and you squirm and it accomplishes nothing except confirming that you cannot move your arms and it is dark and-

you cannot move your arms because the room is narrower now in the middle

the room is hot and you itch and you cannot move your arms

and you can feel your skin begin to blister from neglect and you feel your skin grow clammy and hang off your skeleton at odd angles and you cannot move your arms

and you cannot move your arms because the room is dark and the room is narrower now in the middle and

all at once you realize where you are

and you shake your head

and you thrash your legs

and you cannot move your arms

and you scream

and the scream is all you hear until you hear nothing and you do not know if you have stopped screaming or your ears have ruptured or the air itself in this familiar and twenty times fuckedup shell steals your very voice from you.

And yet.

Something about the familiarity brings you back to a mind approaching right.

You’ve been here before.

You survived this before.

You remember what you did before.

You gather up the thoughts in your head and all the parts of you that are you and you transform them to crystal in your head and you take your collection of jagged rocks and compress them to diamond and marble and you build an impenetrable fortress and you send yourself to hide away and you hope that the you in hiding will be safe.

After all, this worked once before. After all, you are alone in here. And if you can pause yourself in time and wait indefinitely then no time will seem too long and you will awake right on time and be greeted by friends and you will be safe until then because after all you are alone in here and you know this because you were alone last time and there was no one else here and your plan worked it worked it worked-  _ but, you remember, hadn’t you always claimed not to remember what happened while you were inside? that it all felt like a hazy dark dream relegated beneath the deep sediment in your basal ganglia? then why are you so sure? why are you so sure you’re alone? why are you so sure why are you so sure _

Your mind is dealt with. You have done so yourself. Your body protests painfully. Your legs demand to move but they cannot move. And so they blister instead. Your head demands to move but it cannot move. And so it blisters instead. Your chest demands to move but it cannot move and so it erupts in a torrent of cold fire and thin pinpricks pass over your body and you squirm but you cannot squirm and your body casts its prayers out to anyone beyond the all too thin all too resilient barrier around your body except you have to laugh because isn’t that just so silly of you everyone knows there’s nothing outside the shell everyone knows you’re alone in here the shell is your shape the shell molds to you and if you cannot move it must be because you don’t want to  _ but your body itches and spasms and burns you need to move it  _ if you wanted to move you would be moving you are in control here after all you’re the only one here don’t you remember  _ but if i’m the only one here then whose thoughts are these  _ these are your thoughts naturally who else  _ no no you’re wrong i threw my thoughts away to survive i stopped thinking in here and yet here you are which means _ i fail to see who else i could be  _ no no no no no no these aren’t my thoughts these aren’t coming from me who are you who are you who are you who are you _ oh don’t act so stupid  YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHO I AM -

and

a bitter laugh fills your mind

and

your world flashes red

and

then

a light pierces your crimson dark

It singes your eyes but you adjust quickly and the sound of birdcall floods your silent prison. Your body lurches forward. Your mind does not follow. You can feel yourself laughing. A sliver falls away from your chrysalis. The birds are ravenous. The light burns your skin and if you looked you would see that its scarred mass was reforming and warping and twisting under the light, but you don’t look because your mind resides still inside crystal walls high and impenetrable and besieged.

The birds are ravenous and they consume because they consume, hunger bred from tautology. And your eyes singe and melt and rejoice in the open air. And the dirt gets in your skin and burns and your wounds fester and you laugh. Everything is blinding white and you cannot see and wind blows and drives your skin crazy with sensation and you move your haggard nails around your flesh to scratch and claw and the bliss would overwhelm your mind if it were not so well guarded and your head tilts back in bliss and you laugh.

And you scream to any stray ear that might be listening how funny it is, how funny that the birds have not had their hunger sated and have moved onto your flesh, and you laugh to sky above or ground below because how can you be sure which way is up you laugh in all surrounding directions about how good it feels how blessedly good it feels when the crows start in on you - yes yes take the eyes first you won’t need them any more and they burst like grape tomatoes and just as delicious and the crows start in on your flesh pecking and gnashing at it with talons and beaks custommade for just such a luxurious meal as you

and you howl laughter because it feels so good it feels so damnably good and you thrash and laugh and present all the softest parts of you for consumption and the birds oblige oh do they oblige and you are consumed you are devoured and you feel yourself turning to soot oh delicious succor as you and you are tallow now your bones are shredded like paper and the marrow is passed around like fine tasting wine and your mind falls out of your body in a single pearl that lays on the ground perfectly defensible

and you watch from the ground there you watch as your body is disassembled and devoured and you watch it laugh and wail in ecstasy the whole time and you wish you were still in there you wish you wish and you see the birds start to take off and that’s you inside of them no you’ve become them your body flies through the air now your body dissipates and scatters and your mind your mind your mind wishes it could wishes it could desires to take off desires to scatter and

then

it

does

and you are flying among them some crows your body some crows your mind but really who could tell the difference? a bird is a bird is a bird and the air soars under you and buoys you dizzying heights turning aileron over yourself g force and airflow principles in concert sending shrieks of electricity through your body and you know you were always meant to be birds after all it feels so right it feels so good you would smile if your lips were not some bloody smash divided between three crows sometime there at the end and isn’t that just perfect isn’t that just great and you know this is exactly how your body was meant to be isn’t it great isn’t it great doesn’t it just feel great-?

So much so that the feeling of coming back reconstituted to your body hurts worse than the being consumed. You clutch your chest and it's still there and you lurch- this can't be happening, you think, put me back, you want to be birds you want to be carried on and in birds through the air and scattered all over like fine rainfall. Your breath comes once and then stops, halted in your throat and you choke on it silently. If it was not to be, you think, if you cannot be a flock and scatter to wind, then what else is there for your painfully solid flesh to become?

A figure spins in your mind's eye.

You shake your head until the image becomes foggier. It takes a long time but it happens. You press your hands against the ground and stand. A field. It extends in all directions for further than you can see. You stagger but do not fall.

“Nagomi? Nagomi? Are you there?” An omnipresent voice. You start. What is left of your animal brain darts around to find its source. “I am able to contact you now. For the moment. At least. Can you hear me.”

You make some gutteral noise.

“Allow me to check in with you, Nagomi. To make sure you have not lost yourself.”

“Film forms on the surface of a pond rendering it more smooth than ever before; immune to ripples it chokes oxygen from all life beneath. A body formed on death.”

“Okay then.”

“I am a demon born of the sixth heaven, come from on high to speed the evolution of this planet’s multivariate dregs.”

“Right. Maybe it is time to take a break.”

No- the feeling courses through you, and the prospect of losing of giving up of leaving this undone jolts you back into your right mind and with a surge of strength you force down everything boiling in you and turn your thoughts away from what nonsense they had become.

“No. No,” you say. “No. I can keep going.”

Dreamy is silent before she says, “Are you sure?”

“Yes. What do you need to do.”

“There is one level deeper for me to travel. It will be more difficult on you still and I am not sure how you will handle it.”

“Are you kidding?” you ask, forcing a smirk to your lips. “That one was nothing. Barely even a warmup. Hit me with the best thing you have.”

“Nagomi.”

“Yes?”

“That was not the beginning of a sentence. That was an admonition.”

“Save it for when I’m out of here.”

“Nagomi. I cannot lose you. I cannot lose you as well. I cannot lose you to this.”

“I’m sorry, Dreamy. But I think you lost me a long time ago.”

“Well. Then I suppose I have little else to lose. I will see you when this is over.”

And the sky turns pitch black.

And you know where you need to go.

A dull pain in your gut sets your mind at a point on the horizon and you follow it through bleak landscape, lit by nothing even as you see it fully. And your mind drones on in unparseable tones as you trek and grass turns to sand and sand turns to ash and ash turns to swamp and biomes and locales fly by you and you find yourself at a stadium knowing what comes next.

You were around, in some sense, for both times Day X descended. You played in one. But you were truly present for neither. Not in the way you should have been.

An impact on the field as the Shelled One descends in a cacophony of sirens and screams and wind blows past you but it like everything else is not strong enough to stop you and you approach the site of its strike sticking oblong out of the field like a boil.

You ready your gauntleted arm and your rage and you strike.

HELLO MCDANIEL.

EXACTLY THE GREETING I’D EXPECT FROM YOU.

You ignore it and continue to strike and its shell splinters.

ARE YOU EXPECTING

TO FIND SOMETHING WITHIN ME?

Your arm splinters against it and the splinters harden and reharden themselves into fractal patterns, smaller grasping claws, infinite and finely textured. And your rage continues.

WELL.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE ME?

And you pierce it with one last strike, its shell cracking and decomposing and loosing a noxious gas around you and you feel your eyes sting and a copper taste in your mouth as your gums bleed and your teeth loosen and.

A figure remains.

It smiles at you.

It doesn't look like you.

But you look like it.

And you know now what you have always known.

That there is no one in your head but you.

You scream.

But you don’t scream.

Because your voice is already saying something.

NICE OF YOU TO FINALLY JOIN US.

And you are standing inside of a fractured peanut shell, a smile on your face, addressing the empty field in front of you with a voice that was always yours.

You summon your Pods. Kept in two long rows. In stasis. You scrutinize them. Here is Jessica Telephone. You prod her hard in the stomach. She does not respond. You walk. Here is York. You know you are supposed to loose them. But you will not do that to York. You can do this yourself.

The Crabs stand before you. They made you what you are. But they did not make what you will be.

The first you tear into with your maw. You are ravenous. And you consume. And having used your mouth you may discard it.

You prod at the roof of your mouth with your tongue and the unmistakable irresistible maddening taste of blood begins to flood your pallet. Your jaw begins to split wide and before it unhinges entirely you feel a gasp of tension run through the razor sharp implements of bone it had been constructed from and they sing out at precisely 440Hz as they shatter. You grow exactly seven thousand and two teeth. And each is sharper than the last.

The second you rip into with your hands. You will suffer none before you. And having used your arms you may discard them.

You shrug your shoulders. They feel loose. They crack and disassemble. And a torrent of your own new flesh spews forth. Each spiralized implement bifurcates to two others. These bifurcate further. You are a tree made on whirling death. You have claws and shell and you run them against each other and cut yourself to prove their sharpness. And it is not enough. You smash them against each other and break them and they grow back stronger and harder and sharper.

The third you trample under your feet. They have no place but there. And having used your legs you may discard them.

You rend your torso from what parts of you are not yet contaminated. Sluglike ooze emanates from you and covers you and digests you. And you molt and twist. And you bubble and corrode. And you come out as yourself.

And you are beautiful.

And your grand new form visits its death on creatures so far beneath you that you would not notice them if you did not take personal enjoyment in their evisceration. You are a creature allowed all its desires. And you enact them.

Until one remains. A breeze blows. Her hair wisps. She looks at you with a look you cannot differentiate between defiance or nonunderstanding.

Your cancer body approaches her.

And

The scenery changes. You are in some confined room. It is strange and oppressive. Your target is before you. Her eyes are closed now. In slumber.

You step forward. But your body is wrong. You look down. Too few limbs. Too coherent. Not yours. It doesn’t matter. You have something to finish.

Your arms are too weak to rend her instantly. Too unsolid. But you will have them back soon. You grasp her neck. She awakes. Your mind tears. Nothing you can’t endure. You force her down into the bed by the throat.

“Nagomi-” she chokes. You’ve never heard the word before. “Please-” You throttle harder. She places a hand on your arm. It is warm. The sensation feels unfamiliar.

She smiles.

You tighten your grip. You loosen your grip.

You loosen your grip.

You tighten your grip.

You loosen your grip.

You release your grip.

You collapse onto the floor. You try to match your mind to your form. Your disorientation ebbs and flows.

You run your hands across your skin and try to remember what it was like when that sensation felt normal.

You shut your eyes and open them again. They come open wet and you don’t know why.

You try to speak. Deep sea muffled noise comes out.

Dreamy shakes her head. “It is okay. Do not rush yourself. You will be back soon.”

*******

After enough time has passed for you to come back for yourself shaken but whole, Sutton confirms what you already knew for sure: nothing foreign lingered in your head. All your thoughts were your own. It would make you tear at your hair if you had the strength.

"But that doesn't mean the thoughts are  _ you  _ either,” corrected Sutton.

“It is my brain producing them.”

“Correct. But they can be held apart from whatever the concept of  _ you _ represents.”

“And how do I do that.”

"How should I know. I am a half-psychic dream-affiliated entity. Not a licensed counselor."

You stand up from the floor. Sutton is reclining, ice at her neck. You wince and feel shame.

"So after all that you're saying, what, go to therapy? That's your big revelation?" You are unable to keep the spite out of your voice. You hope she knows it isn’t directed at her.

"I did not say as such. But it would be a suitable beginning. Nagomi this is not a movie or game. I cannot magic away your hurt. That is something ultimately only you can do."

“What if I don’t know how. If I can’t do it, what then?”

Sutton cocks her head to the side. “Nagomi you are so good at changing yourself. I am sure you will find a way.”

“How am I supposed to do that here? On this island where nothing changes. Our Lady would never allow it.”

"Nagomi Mcdaniel I am surprised at you. I had not thought you one to so willingly acquiesce to a god's demands."

You squint your eyes slightly. “I am being serious, Sutton.”

She sighs and sits up in bed, turning slightly to face you. "You have been here longer than I but you are stubborn Nagomi. I do not believe Our Lady wishes to keep you from changing. She has no interest in seeing you suffer. She wishes only to make sure that change is your choice. And to give you time. Time to change. And time is what you need now, Nagomi. And here if you desire you may have a luxury unpossessed the world over: time to yourself. You can have a time without pressure, without obligation and observation. You may do with it what you will. But I suggest you use it to heal yourself."

You inhale. You pause for a moment. And you exhale. You search for any way to place yourself into words but none ring both true and profound. So you stick with true.

“It’s not fair. I know it never is, never was promised to be. But we both know I never asked for any of this. I only wanted-” and you pause as you try to remember what you were going to say next but it escapes you. Sutton notices and elides your gap in recitation.

"Yes. It isn't fair. Egregiously unjust, actually. And yet, you still must labor to fix what another has broken. Or it will remain as such."

You sigh and move towards the window. Sutton continues.

“I know you can do this, Nagomi. You have risen to so many challenges before this one. Consider this one of them. Demonstrate your strength to it. I believe in you.”

Your face is reflected in the glass separating light from dark and it is all you can see. But you can hear the ocean best here. It sounds like whispers in a language you will never learn. Your reflection mumbles an ‘okay’. And you are the only one who hears it.

* * *

_ "i'll scatter - _

_ i'll scatter like birds _

_ i'll go everywhere…" _

_ "broken birds (rest in pieces)", car seat headrest _

* * *

Long ago you created a manifestation of your rage. Its avatar lived inside and alongside you. It surprised you when you first noticed, but in hindsight you couldn't remember when it stopped looking any different from you.

York sits in the sand beneath your feet. He is telling you about something and you would say if pressed that you tried your best to listen. But your dork sure can ramble.

There is a paper plate in your hands. There is food on it. You taste and it tastes good, as far as food goes. York’s mother prepared it and she has gone away somewhere to fetch more.

There is a bonfire on the beach. There is no sun in the sky. There are stars in the sky, and people dancing under them. There are people you know and people you don't and each have brought their friends. There is joy and rest.

There is something inside of you that cannot be allowed to break. You imagine it as a door. There are boxes stacked in front and planks nailed in front, but you can open it with effort. What's inside the door isn't important. Or maybe it is, maybe it's very important, but you do know for sure that if you go inside you are still yourself. All of you is yourself, and perhaps this is enough for you: to be yourself, and for the door to hold fast.

You lean forward. You put a hand on York's head. The door shakes forward. York looks up at you. The door bends. The door splinters. There is music. York’s mother returns to refill his plate. You move your hand around York's hair. It is longer now than it was. He playfully pushes your hand away. The door buckles. But it does not break. And again, it does not break.

And that is enough. It will have to be enough, for now. You smile, and you mean it.


End file.
